The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Bangalore's power network capacity to be nearly doubled

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 05, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Bangalore's power network capacity to be nearly doubled

Special Correspondent

This will end power supply interruptions because of overloading

BANGALORE: There is some good news for those Bangaloreans who are irritated over the frequent interruptions in power supply during the peak hours due to overloading of the power network.

The power handling capacity of Bangalore's electricity network is being nearly doubled to prevent such overloading. The unprecedented and record increase in the power consumption of Bangalore in the last few years has made the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) and the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) to launch a mega initiative to increase the city's power handling capacity from 1,600 MW to 3,000 MW at a cost of Rs. 1,240 crore.

Announcing this to presspersons in Bangalore on Monday, BESCOM Managing Director (in-charge) V.M. Chandre Gowda said the entire system augmentation work was expected to be completed by September 2008. That would help take care of the further growth in the city's power consumption till 2011.

The KPTCL and BESCOM had taken up setting up of 27 power stations of various capacities in different areas, besides laying new power transmission lines.

The system constrains were being felt by consumers mostly in the eastern and southern parts of Bangalore. The system upgrading work in some of the areas such as Koramangala and Austin Town would be completed by June-end, he said. Ninety per cent of the system upgrading work would be complete by next summer itself, he assured consumers.

The power consumption of Bangalore was growing at a record rate of 20 per cent in the last couple of years, mainly due to the industrial growth, especially the IT industries, and increase in the number of houses. The power consumption of Bangalore, which stood at 15 million units a couple of years ago, had now touched 25 mu, he said. In fact, a shopping mall itself was consuming nearly 4 MW of power in Bangalore, he said.

BESCOM had created another record by being the first ESCOM in the country to take up construction of a hi-tech gas insulated power station that not only occupied less space, but also had aesthetic appeal. While the conventional power stations required about six acres of land, the gas insulated station required only one acre.

But it would cost double that of the conventional station. While the first such hi-tech station is coming up on Residency Road, another one would be set up near Whitefield, he said.

On the revenue collection, he said nearly one-third of the total 59.21 lakh power consumers in Bangalore were paying their monthly bills through the modes other than the cash counters of BESCOM. They were paying their bills through All Time Payment (ATP) kiosks, Electronic Clearing Scheme, BangaloreOne kiosks, Easy Bill and Bill Junction systems.

24-hour power supply

Mr. Gowda said all villages in the BESCOM jurisdiction would get 24-hour power supply in about two years when the BESCOM would extend its Rural Load Management Scheme (RLMS) to all the villages.

At present, irrigation pumpsets were being given 3-phase power supply (which enables the operation of IP sets) only for about nine hours a day.

But the domestic consumers in villages were also facing load shedding every day as they were also being fed from the same network as that of the IP sets. However, the RLMS would have a pre-programmed unit that would automatically segregate the domestic load from that of IP sets to ensure 24-hour supply for them.

While RLMS had already been implemented in 136 rural feeders of the total rural feeders of 1,100, an additional 179 villages would get the scheme in about five months, he added.

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